Classism in America

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #34

JPKab wrote: post #11

Because of where I grew up (rural South and Appalachia), my native accent is something that I've learned to mask in all professional settings. It doesn't matter how immaculate my grammar is: in the profession of software engineering, southern accent = ignorant bigot who can't be trusted. People's biases, conscious or otherwise, are noticeable. The irony is that I practice "code switching", so basically my coworkers h…

It's remarkable to me how folks who would never, ever be seen to say anything rude about other races (or who would only do so very obliquely) will quite loudly smirk about how much they hate Southerners, how stupid they think Southerners are &c. It's all just class. One can be just as intelligent with a Southern accent as one can be stupid with another.

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #172

100k wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a bit of that when I moved to SF. It's harder to pin Midwesterners down by accent, though (city folks, anyway).

Part of that is because Chicago is considered the baseline "accent" for many news broadcasters, radio personalities, etc. As a result, most Americans have heard that accent their entire life and therefore don't really interpret it as all that different. I've found that it's the keywords that indicate where people are from within the Midwest: Is it soda or pop? Is it car-mel or care-uh-mel? (I do linguistic stuff in m…

Post by kbenson » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

secstate wrote: post #330

kbenson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems counterintuitive to simultaneously make reference to one erroneous snap judgment (the cop assuming the white woman was not the shooter) without acknowledging the other side of that coin. No supporting evidence has been presented that a person will necessarily attribute the same level of certainty when positively or negatively associating a person to a category, either globally or under specific circumstanc…

In the long-form radio story, the cop very clearly presents that it was the shooters apparent gender that confused him and nearly cost him his life and the life of the perpetrator. They also noted in the story that officers are briefed on active shooter situations to assume a white male suspect. This was in Nevada, a state that has become (thanks largely to this and other similar stories) a paragon of officer educati…

Post by civilian » Sat, Apr 09, 2016, 8:33 AM UTC

secstate wrote: post #303

im3w1l wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are right that gender is a very strong predictor, you are wrong about race, according to CNN[1]. > white people ... committed some 64% of the shootings ... Black people committed close to 16% ... Asians were responsible for around 9% ... Latinos are almost nowhere to be seen > whites and blacks are pretty proportionate to their population [1] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/27/us/mass-shootings/index.ht...

No, the cop on the show explained his reasoning that he expected a young white male. Cops are taught that active shooters are predominantly young white males. You can argue statistics, but the officer in the piece specifically said he was looking for a man, not a woman.

Post by Roboprog » Sat, Apr 09, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #186

fnovd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone southerner has "southern" values. The south also has urban areas where people lean more to the left than their rural counterparts. There are just fewer of them. They (unfairly) get stuck with the same stereotypes.

That's the idea of generalizations. They don't need to be 100% fair, just statistically useful. I'd wish people would get that, and only complain when a generalization is statistically wrong (e.g. doesn't really hold for the majority of the people it lumps along), instead of everytime they find a counter-example...